Exhibit Opening 2/19/08 - 6:30-8:00pm - Fisk University

Redeeming the Legacy of Music Historian John Work III
Fisk Professor’s Contributions Celebrated through Book, CD and Exhibit

Nashville, Tenn.—Fisk University scholar and music historian John Work III made invaluable contributions in preserving a richer, more detailed and ultimately more accurate view of the life of the black Delta community and the music that ran through it with his field recordings and work with Alan Lomax and the Library of Congress. A new exhibition celebrating his work, The Beautiful Music that Surrounds You, opens at Fisk University with a gala reception on Feb. 19 from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. in the John Hope and Aurelia E. Franklin Library. Free and open to the public, the event is sponsored by Fisk University, Vanderbilt University Press and The Arts Center of Cannon County.

The exhibit and opening are the latest in a series of event shining new light on Work’s contributions in preserving an important part of American history. Vanderbilt University Press recently published Lost Delta Found:Rediscovering the Fisk University-Library Of Congress Coahoma County Study, 1941-1942. The book presents long lost research from three noted Fisk University scholars—John W. Work, Lewis Wade Jones and Samuel C. Adams, Jr.—who journeyed with folklorist Alan Lomax of the Library of Congress to Coahoma County, Mississippi. Their purpose was to document the musical habits and history of the black community there. The field notes, interviews, and musical transcriptions of the Fisk researchers were a major component of the study and were to be published jointly by Fisk and the Library of Congress. The Fisk material, however, disappeared in Washington D.C., before the findings could be published.

The book was followed by the release of Recording Black Culture, John Work III, a CD featuring Work’s personal field recordings of sacred harp singing, quartets, string bands, blues and gospel singing. The music here represents a broad cross-section of styles and gives a fuller, more nuanced representation of the music that permeated the African-American community in the earlier part of the 20th century. The CD’s liner notes, written by music scholar Bruce Nemerov, who also co-edited Lost Delta Found, have been nominated for a GRAMMY™.

The exhibit, Lost Delta Found and Recording Black Culture make it impossible to overlook the contributions of John Work III in preserving and celebrating African-American music and culture. In many ways this trifecta of events celebrating Work raises to newfound prominence an important historian who has for too long been overlooked. Thanks to Work and his efforts to capture an important time in American music, it is indeed possible to revel in the beautiful music that surrounds us.

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